From Defending U.S. to Defending Goal

This is where you may dust off the sports-military metaphors and suggest that Anthony Reichwaldt really knows defense, but the 23-year-old goalkeeper defies such glib description.

The truth is, he sees little commonality between playing soccer and the 12 months he served in Afghanistan. And despite this — or maybe because of it — we think he is someone you’d want to meet, as he is unlike the typical scholar-athlete you’d find around South Orange Avenue or any other campus nowadays. The military experience, for starters, was almost a whim.